Bell Target #21

I guess it was a fit of marketing optimism that Daisy decided to provide its audience with an indoor shooting opportunity, presumably for the snowy months.

 Now, to sell this to the parents (who also had to look at the thing) it needed to be attractive enough to have in the house. The generic bell targets at the time were either plain, industrial boxes, or gaudy, carnival / shooting gallery contraptions.

 So a nice-sized, nickel-plated (and with just enough design flourish) target box was born.

The design fell to Daisy employee W.E. Hawthorne. He submitted a patent application March 1911, and patented it July 1912 (#1,032,060).

 Boy, it was hard to come up with any information on this bell target. The Daisy museum had no information, nor did the internet. So, I took a different tack. I have a copy of Bob Boccaccio’s Daisy Air Rifle Paper Targets and son-of-Daisy gun, there it was.

 Mr. Boccaccio shows a Daisy paper target (circa 1911), the reverse of which has this bell target picture and description. Bob indicates that this is “the #21 Bell Target”, manufactured 1911-1915.

 Subsequently, I found images of this target in period wholesale catalogs, but oddly, I have never seen it advertised for sale, either wholesale or retail. The target card says it was available for 50-cents. So, was it ever sold? Or sold so little that the market fell flat? Anyway, here’s one now.

 By the way--has anybody ever seen surviving paper targets for this thing? I would like to put one together with this bell box just to complete the package. Thanks, Jay